Elections
to the Russian Duma in 2016: relevant or a waste of time and money?

Judging
by the reactions in the western corporate media, the 2016 elections
to the Russian Duma are basically a non-event: evil Putin kept his
“grip on power”, all the parties in the Duma are basically under
his control and no real opposition was allowed to emerge. Even in
Russia, there are some who agree, but for different reasons. They say
that everybody knew that United Russia (the party of Putin and
Medvedev) would win no matter what and that the entire election was
therefore a rather boring event. Actually, there is some truth in all
of the above, but this also completely misses the point.

Problem
number one: Russia ain’t Switzerland

The
single most important thing to understand about Russia is that she is
not a western or European country. If the Ukie nationalists like to
say that “the Ukraine is Europe”, then I would paraphrase them
and say that “Russia is Asia” (the Ukies agree with that, by the
way). This is not quite true, in reality Russia is Russia, but it is
much closer to the truth than most observers care to admit. In the
case of elections, for example, Russia is much more like Japan: she
has that mandatory external veneer of democracy, but in reality, the
Russian people’s attitude to authority and power is much more
similar to the attitude of the Japanese: they understand that the
real power and authority in Russia (or Japan) does not really depend
on election results and that the real centers of power in these
countries are either vested in individuals (such as Putin or the
Emperor), or in informal groups of people (state security and
business people in Russia, old families and industrialists in Japan).

That
does not make elections irrelevant, however, far from it. They are,
in fact, a key way to get a sense of what the public opinion and,
depending on the outcome, they can send a very powerful message to
those who “have ears to hear”.

Problem
number two: the real opposition in Russia is not in the Duma, it is
in the Kremlin

There
is a lot of truth to the accusation that the Duma is just a
rubber-stamping club and that all of the parties which made it into
the Duma (United Russia, Communists, Liberal Democrats and Fair
Russia) are pro-Putin. They are! But that misses the point. The real
point is that while United Russia is generally pro-Putin and
pro-Medvedev, the other three are very strongly anti-Medvedev,
anti-Russian government and, especially, anti-the economic-financial
ministers of the Medvedev government. The truth is, the real
opposition to Putin is precisely that, the economic-financial
ministers of the Medvedev government and all the factions which they
represent: bankers, IMF-drones, corrupt businessmen from the 1990s
who hate Putin because he does not allow them to steal like in the
past, all the ex-Nomenklatura and
their kids who made a killing in the 1990s and whose heart is in the
West, the Atlantic Integrationists à
la Kudrin
who are basically “Washington consensus types” and who hate the
Russian people for voting for Putin. That is the real opposition and
that opposition is far more dangerous than the US and NATO combined.
And for that opposition the result of the elections are a crushing
defeat. Why?

Because
besides the hyper-official “power party” United Russia, all the
other parties in the Duma are far more anti-capitalist and
anti-American than Putin. For the Empire, “United Russia” is as
good as it will ever get. Any alternative will be far, far worse.

As
for the overtly pro-US political parties (like PARNAS or Iabloko),
they barely got 3% together, way less than the minimum of 5% (for
each party) that they needed to get into the Duma. This basically
confirm what I always said: there are no real pro-US forces in
Russia, none.

What
does this all mean? Simple:

The
Russian people got a rubber-stamping Duma, which is exactly what they
wanted!

Maybe
this is not great in terms of “democracy”, but in terms of real
“people power” this is a fantastic result.

What
about the turnout? Does the roughly 48% (provisional figure)
participation indicate that the boycott proclaimed by some liberals
worked? Hardly. For one thing, this level of participation is
actually pretty good, ssimilar to what Swiss parliamentary elections
typically score. Furthermore, a lot of United Russia voters were so
sure of their overwhelming victory that they did not even bother to
vote. Had they shown up the United Russia score would have been even
bigger.

What
about fraud? Yes, there were instances, but since the new system
makes it possible to for every citizen to monitor every single
polling station live, they were rapidly caught and dealt with. To its
great chagrin, even the OSCE had to give these elections a “mixed
review”
which in plain English translates into “oh shit, we ain’t got
nothing!”.

Conclusions:

These
elections were a huge personal victory for Vladimir Putin.
Conversely, they are a major faceplant for the Atlantic
Integrationists and the AngloZionist Empire. This was also the
ultimate proof that the idiotic western plan to destabilize Putin by
means of economic sanctions has had the exact opposite effect, thank
you: the Russians have circled their wagons around their President
and the mood in Russia is one of extreme resolve.

There
is one risk for Putin here, but it is minor. The electoral system in
Russia means that while the United Russia party got something in the
range of 54% of the votes, it will take 238 343 seats
out of 450, giving it a comfortable absolute majority. Some observers
say that if things do not go well and if the economic crisis does not
get better, the Kremlin (both Putin and Medvedev) will not be able to
blame it all on the Duma. This is true, but this is also no big deal.
First, both Putin and Medvedev can always blame the West for
everything even when, like in the case of the frankly idiotic
economic policies of the Russian government, even if, in reality, it
is the Russian government which is entirely responsible for the
crisis and when the West’s sanctions are having only a minor effect
on the situation. But far more relevantly, United Russia is not
really-really Putin’s party. His *real* party is not a party at
all, but rather a movement, theAll-Russia
People’s Front or
“ONF” (I described that organization and its role here).
Should things get really tough or should the Atlantic Integrationists
try to overthrow Putin during, say, an extraordinary United Russia
Congress, Putin would just have to turn the ONF into a regular
political party, blame the 5thcolumn for the attempt at regime change
and crack down on his opponents with the full support of the Russian
people.

The
truth is simple: Putin personally and the interests he represents
have never been more powerful than today. The overwhelming majority
of the Russian people are fully behind the Kremlin and the writing on
the wall for the Empire is simple: “Lasciate
ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”!